Wal-mart Chicken Hot Thing In Hampton

Store Struggles To Meet Demand For Cheap Meals

HAMPTON — It has no finger lickin' slogan and no snazzy commercials, but the chicken sold at the Hampton Wal-Mart Supercenter's deli has Peninsula residents lining up for hours.

Local shoppers stand in line for at least 45 minutes and up to three hours for eight pieces of freshly fried chicken for $2.99.

"We have to turn down orders on the weekends," said Wal-Mart food area director Mike Brantley. "We can't possibly fill them all. I've never seen anything like it in my life."

Neither have Bobbie Willner and her boyfriend Ron Beshears. Standing in line on a recent Friday night, Willner said she and Beshears are "regulars."

"We've been here when the line was almost out the door."

Why wait so long with fast-food chicken drive-thrus dotted across the Peninsula, you ask?

"It's good," said Beshears. "And it's the best deal going."

The chicken is cheaper. At Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, eight pieces of chicken cost $8.99. To add two large sides and four biscuits, expect to hash out $13.39. A Wal-Mart chicken meal including eight pieces of chicken, potato salad, one pound of chicken tenderloins and six dinner rolls or biscuits costs $4.44.

Since Wal-Mart expanded the store into a supercenter by adding a grocery section, the store has sold more fried chicken than any other Wal-Mart Supercenter in the country, said store manager Rob Goding. People were buying so many bags that the store had to limit customers to four bags per visit.

"We're number one in the company - we've got some chicken-loving people," he said. "I guess that's our claim to fame."

The store goes through about 50 cases of the chicken per day, said deli manager Pat Martin. Each case is filled with 100 pieces of pre-seasoned and battered uncooked chicken.

Sometimes the long wait makes customers tempers' boil hotter than the shortening and soybean oil that the chicken is fried in. Phyllis Gerston cried fowl, er, foul while waiting in line.

"It's good chicken," said Gerston of Newport News who was waiting in line with her husband, James. "I just wish they used a better system than this."

The wait is so long because the store doesn't have enough fryers to keep up with the demand, Goding said, despite cooking non-stop from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. But Brantley said a bigger fryer that can handle more chicken has already been purchased.

The three-vat cooker that will eventually replace the overworked two-vat version sits out back, awaiting installation. Brantley expects to fire it up around the end of this month.

Until then, Richard Gaus who travels from Poquoson to buy two bags of chicken each week - one for his family and one for his work lunches, has a system of his own. He waits in line while his wife, Treasa, shops for groceries.

"You work all day long and then you fight the lines," he said.

The store does allow people to call in orders ahead of time, but Duane Worthy, who was also waiting in line for chicken, said he called once and was told the deli could no longer take phone orders that day because they had to serve the customers waiting in the store.

But there are some good things about standing in line, Worthy said: You make friends.

"You get to know each other after standing in this line so long," he said.

Mrs. Gerston who had been talking to Worthy while waiting in line agreed.

"Yeah, I just met him and I feel like I've known him all my life," she said.